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Remember the movie Twister? Well, it got everything right, according to Canadian storm chaser Greg Johnson. Except for the flying cows.

"When people talk about storm chasing, there's this fantasy notion of what that looks and feels like," says Johnson, over the phone from Regina. "And that fantasy grows out of movies like Twister and Into the Storm. And the reality is that those movies got it so right. And people aren't expecting that answer when I tell them."

Johnson, 44, has been documenting bad weather for a decade, something he fell in love with when he moved from Ontario to the Prairies and discovered the region's epic storms. After spending his weekends taking pictures of severe weather, he decided to sell his advertising business four years ago and leave his desk job to follow his passion.

This decision came with some lifestyle changes, resulting in a divorce and forcing Johnson to learn how to monetize his hobby. Aside from selling his footage, he's found a way to make money by offering photography workshops and speaking to organizations across the country.

He also wants to educate Canadians about storm safety, so he speaks to over 200 schools a year. This brings us back to the cows.

"At every school talk I do, during every question-and-answer session somebody asks, 'Have you ever seen a cow flying through the air?' The truth of the matter is, I have literally thousands of pictures of tornados with debris flying around all over the place, and I have scanned through every one of those photos at highest-possible resolution to see if I can see a flying cow — and I have never captured that on film."

This week, you can watch Johnson and his team in Tornado Hunters on CMT.ca, where the country music lifestyle channel is debuting its first-ever web series. Interestingly, CMT will be monitoring fan engagement on social media — where viewers can leave feedback with the hashtag #CMTTornadoHunters — which will then be used to shape the pilot for the actual TV channel this fall.​

Johnson and his crew — which includes veteran U.S. storm chaser Chris Chittick and extreme sports fanatic Ricky Forbes — have seen some pretty scary stuff while driving their battle-ready pick-up truck, Flash. In May 2013, they encountered the largest tornado ever recorded, a four-kilometre-wide beast in El Reno, Okla.

"We literally had the moment where we're driving through a ditch, the farmyard beside us is blowing up, stuff's hitting the truck, and we end up in the air, probably four or five feet," Johnson recalls. "Then we land back down in the ditch, and in front of us, a two-tonne farm truck is helicoptering through the sky."

He says that the farm truck landed in the ditch in front of them, forcing Forbes to take a sharp turn to lift them into the air and out of the truck's way before landing back on the road.

"It's two to three days of straight adrenaline before you come down from that high," Johnson says. "And it's damn exciting, I won't lie."

And while they've faced other hair-raising situations since their El Reno experience — such as manoeuvring around twin tornados in Nebraska this past June — that was the only time their truck went airborne.

One of the toughest elements of storm chasing, he says, is the emotional impact of watching other people lose their lives in storms — something they've seen many times.

"People have been killed, whether it's their truck flying through the air, whether it's watching a town go up into the air or whether it's watching a house explode," he says. "It happens on an alarmingly regular basis. And so, I've rarely been afraid for my own life, but to watch those things happen, it's always terrifying. It is straight-up terrifying."

The Tornado Hunters are considered first responders by broadcast meteorologists, and audiences around the world tune into their newsfeeds and live web streams for real-time updates on extreme weather situations.

Despite the chilling things that Johnson has seen — he also describes watching houses cycling around in a tornado, Wizard of Oz-style — he says that Tornado Hunters also contains some humorous elements, christening it "the Kenny vs. Spenny of storm chasing." His trademark hockey helmet and nerdy blast-proof goggles add a bit of goofiness to the adventure.

And while Johnson commends Twister and Into the Storm for being accurate, he can't say the same about Sharknado. He saw the cult disaster film a few weeks ago for the first time on Netflix.

"We got through about seven minutes of it and we were like, this is the worst," he says with a laugh. "It was so ridiculous."